iable degree their mutual confidence and sympathy. At Deadham he
had braced himself to deal with the subject in a spirit of rather
magnificent self-abnegation. But the effort had cost him more than she
quite cared to estimate, in lowered pride and moral suffering. It had
told on not only his mental but his physical health. Now that he was in
great measure restored, his humour no longer saturnine, he no longer
remote, sunk in himself and inaccessible, it would be not only
injudicious, but selfish, to the verge of active cruelty, to press the
subject again upon his notice, to propose further concessions, or further
recognition of its existence. She couldn't ask that of him--ten thousand
times no, she couldn't ask it--though not to ask it was to let the breach
in sympathy and confidence widen silently and grow.

So much was sadly clear to her. She unfolded Faircloth's letter and read
it through a second time, in vain hope of discovering some middle way,
some leading. Read it, feeling the first enchantment but all
cross-hatched now and seamed with perplexity and regret. For decent
barriers must stand, he declared, which meant concealment indefinitely
prolonged, the love of brother and sister wasted, starved to the mean
proportions of an occasional furtive letter; sacrificed, with all its
possibilities of present joy and future comfort, to hide the passage of
long-ago wrongdoing in which it had its source.

Her hesitation went a step behind this presently, arguing as to how that
could be sin which produced so gracious a result. It wasn't logical an
evil tree should bear such conspicuously good fruit. Yet conscience and
instinct assured her the tree was indeed evil--a thing of license, of
unruly passion upon which she might not look. Had it not been her first
thought--when Faircloth told her, drifting down the tide-river in the
chill and dark--that he must feel sad, feel angry having been wronged by
the manner of his birth? He had answered "yes," thereby admitting the
inherent evil of the tree of which his existence was the fruit--adding,
"but not often and not for long," since he esteemed the gift of life too
highly to be overnice as to the exact method by which he became possessed
of it. He palliated, therefore, he excused, but he did not deny.

By this time Damaris' mind wheeled in a vicious circle, perpetually
swinging round to the original starting-point. The moral puzzle proved
too complicated for her, the practical on